Part 5: The Ramblings of a Funny Man

It feels good to be doing this again! Some RL stuff has been setting me back, but with all of that taken care of, it is time to let the madness go forth once more! Wait, a second, I'm not mad. Maybe I am; I am sitting here typing to myself...

*pauses to think for a moment*

Okay, ramblings aside, let's just jump into this!

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41) Effectiveness of Health Potions

- Health potions are quite the blessing. No matter what fantasy game you play, you more than likely have some form of a health potion. Their uses are incredible when you think about it. Got slashed up by that feisty rogue? Health potion! Did that ogre just flatten you with a club? Health potion! Did a werewolf just maul you? Health potion! Honestly these things fix everything. Then it occurred to me, have health potions ever restored severed limbs? The answer is no. How many times does your party get hacked to pieces? It never happens. Never mind that in all reality that werewolf just ripped your guts out, or that guy with the massive sword just slashed at you, you'll be just fine. As weird as it seems, I'd really love to see a game or see a TT-RPG approach the idea of losing limbs in battle. Bet a fancy health potion won't be able to fix that one.

42) Invisible Inventories

- This... this is one that I knew needed to be made fun of. While I might not be heavily invested into TTRPGs, I have played tons of video games where you have this thing called, "The Invisible Inventory." Is it a bag of holding? I don't know. Is it an invisible pack mule? I have no clue. Is it your own personal, pocket universe that holds massive amounts of goods? Could be (in the case of Fable 3, yes it is). All I know is that adventurers can stash a ton of stuff on them without the need to carry additional bags, sacks, or pouches. Okay, so some games try to limit it with inventory slots or weight allotment, but even that is kind of ridiculous. For example, some games will give you 25 slots to pick stuff up. Try this, with your normal every day gear, try to stuff 25 different items into your pockets (ladies this excludes using a purse; guys this excludes the use of any man bags). On an average day, I carry an ID on my neck, keys, phone, wallet, gum, and some gloves in my coat. I'm basically at my capacity there. Where the heck do these guys get this much room! And if you combine this idea with a scantily, clad character, or a fully armored character (most armor sets in games do not have pouches for storage), it is even more ridiculous! In the end, regardless of what we think, invisible inventories are there to keep us from painful inventory management.

43) The Problem with Being a Scantily Clad Heroine

- Alright, this is funny resides in the realms of MMOs, books, and TTRPGs. With that distinction noted, allow me to explain. In the majority of games (which is where this occurs frequently), have you ever noticed that no one seems to say a thing about these character's appearance? Now, compare this to the three I separated out. In MMOs, other players have a tendency to interact more with other players that play characters like this. Sometimes, that interaction is almost borderline harassment, but I'm not here to talk issues in gaming. I'm here to talk about the silliness of this. The female knight, who is covered head to toe in plate mail, will NEVER receive this unwanted attention. Actually, in some games and movies, certain characters are actually surprised when the armored character is revealed to be woman (which is always a dope as heck scene, unless they get captured). Either way, the point of this was to poke fun at the differences between these two character types. Remember, just because the lady isn't walking around in her underwear everywhere, does not mean she is a less noteworthy character. It just means she doesn't have to put up with crap! Oddly enough this one occurred as I thought about a pretty cool character from a fighting game. You might not know her, but it's Hilde from Soul Calibur 4 and 5:

A pretty cool female character that is 100% in armor that looks bad@$$!

44) Potion's that Backfire

- Have you ever noticed that potions don't backfire? I know this is possible in some games, but the majority of them, potions are very predictable. It just feels kind of odd that a magical liquid produces the exact same effect for each bottle. I mean, it's one thing if the master alchemist is brewing some pots, but nine times out of ten, it is just some random potion vendor selling stuff. Which reminds me, why the heck are potions always in the same bottles? Are these things being mass produced? Anyways, back on topic, you'd think that someone would inevitably make a bad potion, but that never seems to happen. Honestly, that would be funny if you used a mana potion to get some magic back, but it backfired and polymorphed you into a rat. Guess that mage should have added a tsp of of evergreen not a tbsp of evergreen.

45) Loot Drops and Enemies!

- You just finished killing that powerful mind flayer, and he drops a fish monger helmet. Wait a second... where did he get that from? More importantly, why is he just carrying this helmet around? He sure as heck can't wear it, and I doubt he's ever actually run into a fish monger. So how even? Yeah, that's kind of how loot drops work. It seems our great lord RNGesus can make the most random items come from any enemy. Hey, I just slew a rat and received a dark crystal. BAM! Weird loot drops in action! I personally have two games that really stick out to me for this: 1) The pigs in Majula in Dark Souls 2. You can get an item from them that allows you to invade and kill other players. Why would a pig have this item? 2) Crissaegrim in Castlevania: SotN. The game's best sword:

- If you're like me, in these open world games, you tend to save your precious, invisible inventory room for items that are worth a lot of coin. The dungeon boss dies, you open the treasure box and find some gold, some other junk loot, and a bad@$$, magical weapon worth 8,000 gold. With your inventory full of valuables, you head off to the nearest merchant. You go to sell the item, and he offers you 400 gold for it. Wait, that sword is worth 8,000. Too bad, the merchant only has 400 gold for barter. Okay, so you hold onto it and roam the lands, on a quest to make the 8,000. Sadly, it never comes, because no one has 8,000 gold in inventory. So what next? You get your barter skill up, invest in them, and now you can sell it! Wait, they only offered me 1,200 gold! This think is still worth more! So you decide to become evil for a moment and unlock fences to sell goods to. Well, the fence only carries 4k, which gives you more room to work with until you notice that they only offer you 1,350 gold. It is at this point when you realize that you are never going to make that 8,000 gold, because merchants are cheap. You breathe a sigh of disappointment and just sell the weapon. Welcome to open, world merchants and open, world item values. It might say it's worth 12,000, but that's only if the merchant thinks so. Doesn't matter if it is the legendary blade of demon lord, it's only worth 350 gold.

47) Failures at the Last Moment

- We've all had these moments in games. You have 0 potions left, your team is dead, you're almost dead, but so is the boss. You need 1 to 2 good hits before you slay the boss and win the encounter. At this point, the stakes are high. Either you send it in to the abyss and claim your reward, or you go back to the graveyard and try again. You roll your die (or take your action), and it fails miserably. At that point, you pretty much are in shock and awe because you know that the enemy sure as heck won't fail. Instead, they will laugh endlessly as they drink your sweet tears. That's right, YOU... FAILED! And then the salt begins to pile up, because you know that you have to do all of that crap from the beginning. The worse thing is, is that the next fight will start out worse than the last fight. Then, you just find yourself in a state of regression, and eventually just rage quit. But hey, you'll beat the boss one day...

48) Awesome Mounts are Awesome

- In MMOs you will acquire a long list of mounts. This could range from creatures to items to various vehicles. However, there is always that mount out there that will always draw the attention of others, because it's so darn cool. A great example that I could recall was from SWTOR. Back when I use to play, at one point this sweet Imperial Throne that floated came out as a mount. The only way you could get it was to spend an outrageous amount of money to get it or hope to get it from random packs that you had to purchase with RL money. It was pretty rare. On day one, you sure as heck weren't going to buy one, because very few people had it. I had it on day one. I looked like a boss as my Vanguard Trooper sat in this big throne. I must have received about 10-20 whispers about where I got it from. Now, just so you understand, here is what it looked like:

Pretty neat, right? Yeah, when you have a really epic mount that everyone wants, you're going to get some salt and questions. Savor those good moments!

49) I Hate You... I Love You!

- In recent games, teammates have relationship meters. For those of you who don't play games, let me explain this. Relationship meters keep track of how well you're liked by your teammates. Certain actions will cause them to hate you, while others will cause them to like you. This will unlock different perks and traits with them, and typically advance that characters unique story line. This also unlocks the ability to romance certain characters. Basically, this means you need to bring characters along that fit your choice style or you need to be very careful about how you approach situations. Now, apart from some other issues, which are addressed by another funny, this is actually a cool system that requires the player to be mindful of their choices. The issue is, is that some games allow you to not give a darn. For example, Dragon Age and SWTOR both suffer from this. I had characters who hated my guts because I never sided with them. So what did I do? Hey do you want this gold ring? Sure! Hey do you want another one? Sure! Meanwhile they are going from hating me to loving me, just because I bought 60 gold rings for them. It really defeats the purpose of even caring why you make certain choices around them, when you can gift them into loving you. Ugh, it's just stupid! Never mind that I use this whenever possible because I hate trying to impress my teammates. No seriously, why the heck am I trying to impress you? You should be trying to impress me? Do you know where everyone who didn't impress me is? They're either dead or they're back at the camp collecting dust and cob webs because I hate them.

50) Capturing Males vs. Capturing Females

- At some point, in your adventuring career, you're going to get capture by the enemy. Usually this entails going through some cut scene where your character runs into the villain or a group of powerful enemies and is forced to turn him/herself in. Never mind the fact that you've slain droves of these guys before, today, you're incapable of doing the same thing, but we'll get to that in a later funny. So now it's time to go jail! If you're a hero, you lose your gear, and are left in a raggedy pair of pants. Most of the times, you are probably shirtless as well, but hey, at least your nice and ripped to show off for the ladies (what ladies, you're in jail). Nothing strange there right? Just standard, guard procedure of making sure that you are not carrying anything that could help you escape. Now, let's look at heroines. You still lose you're stuff, which is normal, and you get thrown into an equally, dank cell. The only difference is that you're in your underwear. I'm certain if games could get away with it, you wouldn't even be in that. Wait a second, where are her set of jail clothes. Apparently the guards don't keep women's jail clothes; I guess your undies will have to do. Oh yeah, did I mention you're the only lady down here as well. Now, not all games do this; truth be told, only a small set do. I still find it pretty odd though. I mean, can't we afford raggedy clothes for all? Come on, you run the evil empire, but you can't afford some rags for the heroine? Honestly, we all know exactly why this happens. But that is not a topic of discussion that I wish to address. Again, I am here to point out the ridiculous nature of it, and that's all.

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Whew, that was fun! If you've made it this far, thanks for reading!Stay tuned for next week, as I hit you all up with some more Fantasy Funnies. You'll get another blog update the week after!

I gotta point out, though - I agree with you about the potions. But some of the potions in the first Icewind Dale (I'm talking the original, not the horrible Enhanced Editions of those various classic RPGs...) actually has some potions that aren't what they seem. They'll have something named a health potion - like any other health potion - but it's actually some kind of poison or will give you some other undesirable debuff, like Lethargy. The only thing marking these potions as different, sometimes, is one little sentence in the otherwise ordinary description that'll mark it out as being "oddly murky" or "strangely off-color" or something.

I think you mean "Resident Evil 7," which isn't really Resident Evil/Biohazard at all. And the only time anything in RE has ever been able to "restore" limbs is if it's a horrible freaky C-virus or something and you grow a disgusting zombie arm instead and turn into a monster.

But yeah, massive departures from the series a running trend in games these days, sadly. This applies to the RE series now as well. That's off-topic, though.

I gotta point out, though - I agree with you about the potions. But some of the potions in the first Icewind Dale (I'm talking the original, not the horrible Enhanced Editions of those various classic RPGs...) actually has some potions that aren't what they seem. They'll have something named a health potion - like any other health potion - but it's actually some kind of poison or will give you some other undesirable debuff, like Lethargy. The only thing marking these potions as different, sometimes, is one little sentence in the otherwise ordinary description that'll mark it out as being "oddly murky" or "strangely off-color" or something.

Never got a chance to play the OG Icewind Dale. I really wanted to, but I haven't been able to find a copy or downloadable version.